In an anniversary likely to pass with little fanfare Tuesday, the University of Hawai'i completes its 30th year of membership in the Western Athletic Conference, the only home shared by both its men's and women's teams.

Time sure flies when you're having fun.

So, too, of course, has the membership. The comings and goings — goings mostly — of members since UH came aboard numbered 26 at last count.

But the one constant for the Warriors/Rainbow Wahine/Rainbows/Rainbow Warriors over that span is how much UH needs the WAC.

It was true more than 40 years ago when then-Gov. John A. Burns commanded UH to begin knocking on the WAC's door and remains so today in a conference where UH now stands as the senior member.

UH, by virtue of its WAC affiliation, has gained visibility, validation and a lot more. All things it lacked and desired as a struggling independent.

Now, much as UH and its fans might desire a change of scenery, bemoaning the lack of glitter when playing Idaho or New Mexico State or wish for a conference diet of brand-names Oregon, Washington and Brigham Young, the reality imposed by geography, UH's finances and the marketplace is that Hawai'i currently, and for the foreseeable future, has few options outside the WAC.

For all the wishing upon that most distant of stars, the Pacific-10, the interest remains unrequited and the economics suggest it will stay that way for a long time. Unless UH can demonstrate how it will add several million TV-viewing households or how it can help pump an additional $15 million or so in revenues into the Pac-10 coffers each year, there's little to talk about.

Even the Mountain West Conference, composed of teams that fled in the 1999 breakaway, has shown no indication Hawai'i fits in its future plans or is even on its radar. Were it to show an interest you can bet it would come with a hefty price tag.

Nor is going independent a real option. Currently, UH only must book five non-conference football and 13 basketball games a year and that is becoming both a chore and expensive. But if it goes independent, suddenly that means 13 football and 29 basketball games. Only Notre Dame and two of the service academies, Army and Navy, have been able to make that work over the long haul and none has a 2,500-mile handicap from which to work.

Hawai'i's best hope might be a re-drawn conference lineup in the West, the forming of a Pac-10 light so to speak. But there's been no movement.

The fact of the matter, too, is that UH hasn't exactly torn up the WAC in recent years. In the money-producing sports of football and men's basketball, it has one football championship and two basketball titles in the last eight years. Boise State has six football and one basketball.

In the seven Commissioner's Cups, competitive standing across the board for WAC athletic programs, UH has finished no higher than third and averaged a sixth-place standing.

Instead of concerns about remaining in the WAC for several more years to come, UH's worst fear ought to be that the conference finds Hawai'i too expensive a luxury to keep around.

It should be remembered that UH didn't join the WAC as much as it bought its way in back on July 1, 1979, agreeing to underwrite teams' travel here. These days, with subsidies no longer in place, WAC members have come to increasingly look at trips here as a gaping hole in their budgets. The worst-case scenario for UH would be if they get together to do something about it.

Like some 30-year marriages, the spark between UH and the WAC may flicker, but for Hawai'i right now, it beats the alternatives.